BP 1.1.3 will not work with WP 3.0. You need to use BP 1.2.4.1. Before you do any updates to a production site, read the upgrade instructions, the readme.txt files, and throughly search these forums for discussions of issues people have had with upgrading to not only BP 1.2.x, but also WP 3.0. Of course, WP 3.0 is not yet an official release. It is an RC2 at this stage.

You can do a similar search in WordPress Trac and see how much has changed in WP 3.0.

The moral of the story: you are on your own if you decide to stick with older versions of WordPress and BuddyPress. As Paul states above, there are important security fixes (as well as changes in functionality) that are not supported in older versions. It’s your choice.

A custom site will be less of a target than out-of-the-box Buddypress, so I’ll take my chances. If I can get it working on WP 3.0 of course, which is a big if…

It depends on what will take the most work; getting 1.1.3 to work on 3.0 or going with 1.2 and having to strip out all the forum integration and confusing “changes in functionality”. Either way my sites will require loads of custom coding for privacy/security and integration with event management and other scripts.

Any idea whether it is a good idea to start with the newest releases of WP and BP and if upgrading into upcoming releases of BP would work smoothly? I’ve been waiting for WP 3.0 to arrive before creating my community site and I’m hesitant to jump with the current releases if the later versions are might not work straight off.

@dralamir, if you want to put bbpress forums at the center of your site, I would just follow the official releases. My test install of BP 1.2.5 on WP 3.0 worked fine.

My custom site is build around groups, group blogs and P2 front end posting and I want to keep develop it along those lines. The biggest problem was changes in the avatar system. I managed to get that working fine by copying code from BP 1.2.5 following instructions posted here.